Science Studies Network 2008-2009
A list of major initiatives outlined in the SSNet proposal follows. For more detailed information, please consult the proposal itself, or our 2008-2009 executive summary:
Science Studies Network Proposal 2008-09 (pdf)
Executive Summary 2007-08 (pdf)
Graduate-Faculty Colloquium on “Democratizing Science”
This year’s Science Studies colloquium series takes the form of a year-long faculty and graduate student seminar organized in three thematic components: Science in Democracy (Fall 2008); Democracy and Diversity in Science (Winter 2009); and Normative Claims for a Democratic Science (Spring 2009).The core organizing group of Spring Seminar Fellows is as follows:
Graduate Fellows: Julie Homchick (Communication), Sara Breslow (Anthropology)
Faculty Fellows: Malia Fullerton (Bioethics and Humanities), Mott Greene (Earth and Space Sciences), Phillip Thurtle (CHID & History), Alison Wylie (Philosophy & Anthropology)
Graduate Micro-seminars (HUM596)
A 2-credit interdisciplinary graduate seminar will be offered each quarter in conjunction with the SSNet Colloquia. These HUM 596 seminars are C/NC, and are open to graduate students from across the university.
Visiting Speakers
The SSNet hosted several exciting visitors this year. We hosted one visitor per quarter. Check the list of podcasts to hear our visitors' presentations.
Spring Speaker - Kavita Philip (Women's Studies, UC-Irvine)
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009
Kavita Philip is author of Civilizing Natures (2003 and 2004), and co-editor of the volumes Constructing Human Rights in the Age of Globalization (with Monshipouri, Englehart, and Nathan, 2003), Multiple Contentions (with Skotnes, 2003), Homeland Securities (with Reilly and Serlin, 2005), and Tactical Biopolitics (with da Costa, 2008). Her research interests are in transnational histories of science and technology; feminist technocultures; gender, race, globalization and postcolonialism; environmental history; and new media theory. Her work in progress includes a monograph entitled Proper Knowledge, and a co-authored book with Terry Harpold entitled Going Native: Cyberculture and Postcolonialism. Kavita Philip's research interests are in technology in the developing world; transnational histories of science and technology; gender, race, globalization and postcolonialism; environmental history; and new media theory. She gave a public lecture on the topic of "Technological Subjects."
Winter Speaker - Kelly Moore (Sociology, University of Cincinnati)
February 9th & 10th, 2009
A sociologist whose primary interest is understanding “how governments and social movements shape knowledge production and distribution,” Moore has recently published Disrupting Science: Social Movements, American Scientists, and the Politics of the Military, 1945-1975 (Princeton 2008). She gave a public lecture on this new book on Feb. 10th, and discussed her new work on “the politics of nutrition” with the SSNet seminar on Feb. 9th.
Fall Speaker - Eugene Thacker (Literature, Communication, and Culture, Georgia Institute of Technology)
November 24th, 2008
Eugene Thacker's publications include The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture (2005) and Biomedia (2004). He also edited Hard_Code: Narrating the Network Society. Thacker most recently co-authored The Exploit (2007, with Alexander Galloway) on the implications of the ontology of networks for political theory and is currently writing a book on the poetics of biopolitics. He gave a public lecture entitled "After Life," which addressed "a rethinking of the concept of life that is neither reducible to biology
nor sublimated within theology."
Curriculum Development in Science and Technology Studies
A primary goal of SSNet is to coordinate and build upon the rich array of courses and programs in science and technology studies (STS) currently offered at UW. A planning meeting for curriculum projects was convened on January 12th, 2009. Contact the organizers for information about this meeting.
We are actively searching for information about STS-relevant coursework offered at UW. If you have information about relevant courses, please post it to our SSNet Courses Wiki.
SSNet curriculum initiatives include a commitment to develop:
- an on-line catalog and navigational tools that provide undergraduate and graduate students ready access to STS courses and programs;
- plans for an interdisciplinary graduate certificate in STS designed to serve both science students interested in the historical, social, and normative contexts of their research practice, and humanities and social science students engaged in science studies.
See Curriculum Project for more details.
Northwest Summer Institute for Science Studies
SSNet had planned to convene an inaugural Summer Institute in July 2009, but this has been deferred for the time being (finances being what they are). We will revisit these plans in the next year; we envision this Institute as a way of building connections among Science and Technology Studies scholars based at universities and colleges throughout the Northwest, laying the foundations for a regional STS consortium.
Organizers:
- Alison Wylie (Philosophy and Anthropology), coordinator [Bio]
Alison Wylie is Professor of Philosophy and Anthropology, and Adjunct Professor of Women Studies at the University of Washington. She is a
philosopher of science who works on philosophical issues raised by
archaeological practice and by feminist research in the social sciences:
ideals of objectivity, the role of contextual values in research
practice, and models of evidential reasoning. Her publications include
Thinking from Things: Essays in the Philosophy of Archaeology (2002);
edited collections and special issues on Value-free Science? (2007, with
Kincaid and Dupré), Doing Archaeology as a Feminist (Archaeological
Method and Theory 2007, with Conkey), Epistemic Diversity and Dissent
(Episteme 2006), and Feminist Science Studies (Hypatia, 2004); as well as
essays that appear in Agnatology (2008), Evaluating Multiple Narratives
(Springer 2007), the Sage Handbook of Feminist Research (2007),
Theoretical Empiricism (2006), Embedding Ethics (Berg, 2005), and Science and
other Cultures (2003). She is currently working on a monograph, Standpoint
Matters, in Feminist Philosophy of Science.
- Sarah Elwood (Geography) [Bio]
Sarah Elwood is an associate professor in the Department of Geography. Her research focuses on the social and political impacts of geospatial technologies ranging from conventional GIS to collaborative mapping platforms such as GoogleMaps, particularly as these technologies are taken up in activism, social movements, and community-based organizing. In this work, she incorporates qualitative methods, participatory action research, and experiential learning pedagogies. Sarah is currently completing a 5-year collaborative research project with community-based organizations on Chicago’s west side, that considers the sustainability and impacts of their use of GIS in community-controlled redevelopment and neighborhood revitalization efforts.
- Angela Ginorio (Women Studies) [Bio]
Angela B. Ginorio is associate professor in Women Studies, and adjunct associate professor in the Departments of Psychology and American Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington-Seattle. Her scholarship focuses on feminist science studies emphasizing the participation of ethnic minorities and women in STEM, access issues in education for Latino/as and first-generation college students, and knowledge claims of victims. She just finished work as P.I. of the Sloan-funded Interdisciplinary Social Science Approaches to the Participation of Ethnic Minorities in STEM.
She is lead author of ¡Sí se puede! Latinas in schools and co-author of the chapter on Latino education in the just released Handbook on Achieving Gender Equity Through Education and contributed to Access Denied: Race, Ethnicity and the Scientific Enterprise. She has published on these topics in Technology and Culture, Educational Leadership, Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, and Women’s Studies Quarterly.
She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association.
- Mott Greene (Earth and Space Sciences) [Bio]
Mott T. Greene is John Magee Professor of Science and Values at
the University of Puget Sound, and Affiliate Professor of Earth and Space
Sciences at the University of Washington. He Is a historian of science (Ph.D., University of Washington, 1978), and was the first graduate of
the UW to receive a MacArthur Award,(in 1983). He has worked principally
in the history of 19th and 20th century geology, geophysics, and
atmospheric sciences, though he has also published on the sciences in
antiquity. He is currently interested in the radical shift away from
single authorship in the sciences, and therefore in the the necessity of
moving away from the biographical model of the history of science. He
is also interested in current issues in evolutionary theory, and the way
these apply to thinking about how science works.
- Phillip Thurtle (CHID and History) [Bio]
Phillip Thurtle is an associate professor in the Comparative History of Ideas program and the History Department at the University of Washington
and an adjunct in Anthropology. He received his PhD in history and the
philosophy of science from Stanford University. He is the author of The
Emergence of Genetic Rationality: Space, Time, and Information in
American Biology 1870-1920 (University of Washington Press, 2008), the
co-author with Robert Mitchell (English, Duke University) and Helen
Burgess (English, University of Maryland) of the interactive DVD-ROM
BioFutures: Owning Information and Body Parts (University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2008), and the co-editor with Robert Mitchell of the volumes Data
Made Flesh: Embodying Information (Routledge, 2003) and Semiotic Flesh:
Information and the Human Body (University of Washington Press, 2002).
His research focuses on the material culture of information processing,
the affective-phenomenlogical domains of media, the role of information
processing technologies in biomedical research, and theories of novelty
in the life sciences.
- Simon Werrett (History)
- Andrea Woody (Philosophy) [Bio]
Andrea Woody is Associate Professor of Philosophy as well as Adjunct in the departments of Dance, History, and Women Studies at the University of Washington. She received her bachelor’s degree from Princeton and her doctorate from the department of History & Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research interests include philosophy of science, history of science, aesthetics, and feminist perspectives in philosophy. She continues to investigate visual representations as part of a larger project examining how pragmatic techniques for manipulating scientific theories, such as model building and alternative forms of representation, are developed and justified by scientific communities. This work incorporates philosophical issues concerning explanation, reduction, and the rationality of theory change in science. She also has a longstanding interest in feminist epistemology as it intersects with philosophy of science. While her primary historical work has involved the early development of quantum chemistry in the 20thc, other historical interests include the chemical pedagogy of William Cullen and Joseph Black in 18th century Scotland, conceptions of the periodic law and Benjamin Brodie’s chemical calculus in the late 19th c, and the inclusion, and exclusion, of women in American science classrooms and professional societies.
Advisory Group:
- Malia Fullerton (Bioethics and Humanities) [Bio]
Stephanie Malia Fullerton, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in the Department of Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Washington School of Medicine. She received a Postgraduate Diploma (M.Sc.) in Human Biology and a DPhil in Human Population Genetics from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.
Dr. Fullerton served as a University Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the
Department of Anthropology, University of Durham, UK, from 1995 to 1998, before
returning to the US to pursue population genetics research focused on
identifying genetic contributions to cardiovascular disease, at Penn State
University, and non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, at the University of
Chicago, from 1998 to 2002. In 2002, she was awarded a Ruth L. Kirschstein
National Research Service Award from the National Human Genome Research
Institute to re-train in ethical and social aspects of human genetics at Penn
State University. Her research in this area has focused on the epistemological,
ethical, and historical phenomena underlying contemporary scientists'
understandings of population-level genetic variation and its relation to disease
predisposition and health status. Her broad research interests include
scientific decision-making, the relationship of basic research to clinical
research and practice (especially as it pertains to use of racial and/or ethnic
identification), and research ethics.
- Kelly Fryer-Edwards (Bioethics and Humanities; Public Health Genetics) [Bio]
Kelly Fryer-Edwards, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Washington School of Medicine and core faculty for the Institute for Public Health Genetics and the Critical Medical Humanities Research Cluster. She received an M.A. in Medical Ethics and a PhD in Philosophy of Education from the University of Washington, Seattle. Her teaching programs run throughout the WWAMI (Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, Idaho) system for medical students, faculty, and graduate students and utilize narratives and story to teach ethics and professionalism. Other program responsibilities include serving as Director of the Ethics and Outreach Core for the NIEHS-funded Center for Ecogenetics and Environmental Health and also investigator with the Institute for Translational Health Sciences (CTSA) and the NHGRI-funded Center for Genomics and Healthcare Equality. Other research projects focus on effective physician-patient communication and innovative teaching practices. Special interests include community-based research practices, environmental justice, everyday ethics in research practice, feminist and narrative approaches to bioethics, and integrating ethics into training programs, public conversations about science, and public policy.
- Celia Lowe (Anthropology)
